I Didn't Realize That The Partridge Family Had Their Own Version Of "Cousin Oliver?!"

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Originally Posted by Marvo301

Ricky Segall was cast at the beginning of the 4th and final season as Ricky Stevens a neighbor boy who would drop by to sing with or for the Partridges. I think even the producers realized that he was an unnecessary character as his appearances were reduced and he was hardly ever seen (if at all) in the second half of the season.

I agree with however said that they were really grasping at straws by the time that Ricky was introduced. I think that the producers and/or network naively figured that Ricky would create and bring a fresh perspective or dynamic to the show.

What they didn't count on is that, the show is called The Partridge Family, not The Little Boy Who Lives Next Door. Ricky's continued presence on the show didn't make much logical sense because why was he always over at the Partridges' house unsupervised?

Young people I assume, watched the show primarily for David Cassidy and Susan Dey. Who was this four year old little boy with a dark bowl haircut therefore, meant to appeal to? Also, why is the Partridges' little neighbor getting a bigger spotlight and more screen time than the two youngest Partridge kids, Chris and Tracy, had in like the past four years? The show already had two cute little kids in Chris and Tracy and yet, the writers and producers didn't want to do anything with them beyond having them as window dressing.

Also, Ricky didn't so much "sing" as he did shout at you. Ricky Segall was not a particularly talented or gifted child performer, but we were supposed to overlook that because he was "cute".

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Originally Posted by Dianne3

When Ricky was added, it sounds like by this point PF was "grasping at straws".

The more knowledgeable fans can correct me if I am wrong, but didn't David Cassidy announce year 4 would be his last year? Without Keith, since he was the only Partridge family kid that sang there would be no show.

I don't criticize the addition of Ricky, since I think I know why PF did it.

I think that Shirley Jones all but alluded to that in her book.

By the third season of The Partridge Family, David had become the rock star of the century, but that wasn’t making him happy.

He became disgusted with singing what he termed “bubblegum songs” and wanted to go on to bigger and better things and sing hard-rock music in earnest, much in the style of his heroes Eric Clapton and Jimi Hendrix.

So he decided to leave the show. If he had asked my advice, I would have told him to be happy with what he’d got, because that was my philosophy of life. (Besides which, I hated hard-rock music.) But he didn’t discuss the subject with me and decided to leave the show.

There was no replacement for him because David was the show. We were all sad, but we were also aware that it was just a matter of time before the show was canceled anyway.

March 23, 1974, was the last broadcast of The Partridge Family. I was sad to see the show end. If it hadn’t been canceled, I would have been happy to carry on playing Shirley Partridge for another four years. For me and all the rest of the cast, this was the end of an era. Just after the wrap party, David took Susan Dey out for dinner. As he said afterward, he fondly imagined that they would stay friends forever.

After dinner, the two of them went for a drive together and reminisced about how they’d first met when she was an inexperienced actress, and they both started crying. Afterward, David put Susan in touch with Ruth Aarons, who became her manager, and also with Lenny Hirshan, his agent at William Morris, who became Susan’s agent. For a few years after the show ended, David and Susan stayed friends.

Shirley's comment about David getting sick of of singing "bubblegum songs" is kind of ironic because that was I think, the whole message in the "Beethoven, Brahms and Partridge" episode from Season 4. Keith starts dabbling into classical music at the behest of his new girlfriend. And when he tells Walter Yost, the distinguished composer/conductor, that the music that he makes is otherwise "frivolous", Yost tells Keith that what's really important is if his music at the end of the day, makes people happy. Basically, if people enjoy your music as it is, what difference should it make whether or not it's "bubblegum" or classical.

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Originally Posted by Alex Cooper

And what was up with that Ricky kid's haircut? Was he trying to channel Baby Peggy?

I wouldn't have minded Wesley Eure being added to the show, though!

All of the boys had long or longish hair at that point: Keith, Danny, Chris, Reuben's nephew Alan Kincaid, Andrew and David Williams, etc. I was thinking, when did it (at least by the early 1970s) become trendy or acceptable for young men to grow their hair out. It's funny that Keith and Danny had long hair but their music didn't exactly reflect a rebellious or not so clean-cut image. Shirley Partridge seemed like a relatively conservative mother, and yet she allowed her sons to walk around looking like that.

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Originally Posted by Dianne3

There is something else that doesn't make sense with Ricky - he wouldn't have been a regular because of the child's age.
Ricky came on a year before LHOTP premiered, and remember twins were playing Carrie Ingalls because the child actors were only 4.

Retro4Life - I'm currently on season 2 of the PF where Keith is still in high school. Although I did see the episode where he moved out next door the other day. In that episode it was mentioned he was 17. I'm not surprised that by the time PF ends he is in college, or at the very least out of high school.

Keith gets his driver's license pretty quick (since he already was driving at the start of PF). Was there any mention in the later years of Laurie driving?

You could've easily written Ricky out and the plots for the Season 4 episodes would've more or less remained the same. Like in the episode where Shirley challenges her kids to be honest for the next 24 hours. At the midpoint of the episode, Ricky just shows up to the Partridges' kitchen with a guitar for Danny to play for him. What follows for the next few minutes, is Ricky signing his "If I Were a Monkey" song before leaving.

What was the point of that other than the need to give little Ricky Segall his contractually obligated five minutes of screen time? It wasn't essential to the plot, it didn't push the story forward, and it was completely done and forgotten about for the remainder of the episode.

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‘Partridge Family’ Star Danny Bonaduce Gives Rare Update on Susan Dey and Shirley Jones

In the new interview, Bonaduce also shared an update on Ricky Segall, the young actor and singer who appeared on The Partridge Family during the show’s final season and was compared to Cousin Oliver (Robbie Rist) on The Brady Bunch.

“So, he was fine,” Bonaduce said of the child actor. “He was the cute kid. We all knew it was the cousin Oliver thing, everybody, you know.”

Bonaduce revealed that Cassidy, the teen heartthrob and main star of the show, took issue with the addition of the musical moppet when producers added him to the cast.

“If you look when [Ricky] sings, I actually play guitar. David does not,” Bonaduce noted. “David just would not accompany the kid. I guess you know when you’re a big star, and you’ve sold a million records, you don’t have to play for the six-year-old. So I play the guitar for Ricky Segall. Nice guy. I think he ended up a minister. I’m not positive, but I think he ended up actually a minister for a time.”